


A Stitch in Time (Saves 2-3 Years)

by clottedcreamfudge



Category: Stitchers (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Elevator Sex, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Hypothetical Season 4, I am expecting 2 people to read this, Love in an Elevator, One of them is me, Playing in my head for days, Post-Season/Series 03, Pseudoscience, Science Fiction, Turning up late to the Stitchers fandom with a Starbucks, camsten, late to the party, the most important tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24876148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clottedcreamfudge/pseuds/clottedcreamfudge
Summary: “Cameron,” Maggie says sharply, and he zeroes back in on the screen in time to see - what? Kirsten talking to herself?“What’s she saying?” Cameron asks, brow furrowed. They rewind the clip, and there’s an almost imperceptible change in Kirsten’s expression, a minute movement of her head to look more fully at the camera, which it seems like she’s looking for. Her lips move again.There’s quiet for a moment, before Fisher speaks up.“I will never forgive you for what you’re making me do to him.”-Cameron isn't about to stop looking after Kirsten just because she can't remember him. And he's not giving up, he's just... regrouping. And eating his weight in gourmet ice cream.
Relationships: Kirsten Clark/Cameron Goodkin, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 31





	1. A New Hope

**Author's Note:**

> On the list of people I'm half in love with (from a respectful distance), Allison Scagliotti is at the top. (She's wearing a crown made of paper hearts that I made for her.) So when I finished Warehouse 13 and the show decided to ruin my life, I thought "Scags, what have you got for me?" Turns out, she had Stitchers for me, so on the 17th of June I bought and streamed the first season, based solely on the knowledge that maybe, at some point in the future, I might get some good ol' bisexual representation. Featuring Scags! The dream.
> 
> Five days later at 11.30pm, I finished season 3 (which also ruined my life), then stayed up until 1.30am trying to find a post-S3 "fix-it" fic so I could go the hell to sleep. Eventually my wife came downstairs and asked me what I was still doing down there (because I get up for work at 7am and I have absolutely no self-control) but since then I've been itching to write something that might fill the gap a little.
> 
> I hope this does the same for someone else too.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How's a man to wallow when his team won't let him?

Cameron is taking a few days off. Everyone had understood; Maggie hadn’t even offered a token protest, simply eyeing him with an unreadable look before nodding.

“You look like you need it. We’ll see you in a few days. Keep your phone on - I don’t want you going completely AWOL, not with everything as it is.” Cameron had nodded his consent, not trusting himself to speak past that initial, stilted request.

Of course, he has absolutely no intention of answering any calls. Maggie can fire him if she wants, but the only person he’s planning to speak to for the next three days is the pizza guy, Jeff, who doesn’t ask awkward questions like ‘what’s our next move’ and ‘how did you manage to screw this up so badly’ (even if that last one was only said in his own mind). This forced separation would, of course, be an easier feat to achieve if he hadn’t forgotten one fundamental thing: he’s friends with Camille.

Camille, who once managed to throw a birthday party for him in his own apartment - complete with a tricked-out DJ set - without him noticing anything suspicious. Camille, who saves up all her subtlety and tact for her Maggie-mandated hustles, because you can take the girl out of the con but you can’t take the con out of the girl. Camille who, when questioned about her motives for hiding mistletoe in 27 separate locations in his apartment last Christmas (at _waist_ level) was ‘maybe I just want you to get a happy ending, lover boy,’ accompanied by a lascivious wink.

Camille, who is currently calling him for the twelfth time in five minutes.

“What part of ‘I’m taking leave, please don’t call me for three days’ didn’t you understand?” Camille’s snort of derisive laughter is familiar, if unwanted.

“Easy, lab rat,” she says breezily, and Cameron can picture her filing her nails while she’s being an asshole to him; it’s like having a sister he never asked for, except he for some reason chooses to keep her around. “We both know that dealing with me now will be much easier than dealing with me in three days. I’m like the Juggernaut; and honey bear, you are _no_ immovable object.” Cameron sighs and scrubs a hand over his face, knocking his glasses slightly askew. He doesn’t bother to right them.

“I will grant you thirty seconds, since you - perhaps accidentally - used an X-Men reference. Then I’m hanging up. Go.”

“Okay, listen up nerd. We get it... Linus and I, we totally get it. We love Kirsten, for some reason I have yet to fathom, and I get that it’s worse for you, especially since you only recently got to insert tab A into slot B. But you use these three days to sort your sorry ass out, and then we’re coming to get you. We are going to figure out this stupid mess together, like we always do, and we are going to bring our girl home. Okay, Goodkin?”

Cameron swallows and closes his eyes; counts to ten.

“I hear you, Maggie Junior.” His voice is rough, and the laugh that bubbles up in his throat at Camille’s noise of horror borders on hysterical.

“Please, my fellow Cam-prefix, we both know she could crush me like a bug. And I’d probably be into that if I wasn’t so crazy sold on a DJ with victory rolls who spends 80% of her time with the dead.”

“First off, Maggie’s old enough to be your mom-” (not quite, but it still kinda feels like she’s their mom) “-and secondly, you _also_ spend 80% of your time with the dead. It is literally the main thing we do.”

“You know, it’s these little moments of tension between us that make me wonder if we couldn’t have been something more. Problem is, our shipper name wouldn’t work! We’d have to use surnames. Goodson. Engelkin? Work with me here, pilot.”

“Thirty seconds are up, Camille,” Cameron says firmly, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back onto the sofa cushions. “I agree to your terms, on the condition that I am allowed to throw sharp objects at you if you show up anywhere near my door before 8pm three days from now.” Then, more softly - “I just need some time, okay?”

“Message received, loud and clear, Lone Wolf. See you in T minus 36 hours for Project Camsten Mark II.”

“Project-” Cameron is cut off by the dial tone; he stares at his phone blankly for a second, before shaking his head and stuffing it between the sofa cushions. He has the entire Marvel universe at his fingertips, and a frankly unnecessarily expensive tub of raspberry creme gelato in his freezer. He has three days.

* * *

As it turns out, he has less than three hours - in Marvel terms, that’s one movie and a bathroom break, which isn’t what he signed up for. The knocking at the door is insistent, and Cameron considers whether or not he needs to make good on his threat of pointy objects, when a voice that definitely isn’t Camille’s comes through the door.

“Cameron, let me in - we have to talk. I know you’re in there, because you’re not at work. Cameron!” He steps towards the door on autopilot and opens it to see his mother on the other side, an interesting shade of crimson rising in her cheeks. “I’ve been out here for five minutes,” she says curtly, striding into the apartment like she owns the place. Which she doesn’t anymore, because he bought her out, so-

“Mom, you can’t just-”

“Actually, I think I _can_ just,” she says coldly, turning to face him with that air of knowledge and superiority that always made it impossible to talk to her. “You can hide from this if you want to, that’s your business, but I’m absolutely furious that you made this choice without hearing all the facts. You are a man of science, Cameron, and you are missing an opportunity.” Cameron closes the door with more force than is necessary, crossing his arms across his chest to try and hold in the white hot waves of anger rolling through him.

“Science,” he says, quiet and dangerous, “will help Kirsten, yes. But right now, she doesn’t know me and she doesn’t trust me. I cannot-” He closes his eyes, swallows back a tidal wave of _something_ . “I _will_ not go in there unprepared. I need time to process and understand what happened, so I can figure out how to fix it. But mostly I need time off from thinking about how I just lost literally _years_ of headway with someone who very well may be the love of my life.”

His mother considers him for a moment before sighing, tension he hadn’t realised she was holding draining out of her shoulders and making her seem smaller, less imposing. He’s been taller than her for years, but this is the first time he’s felt it.

“Cameron,” she says, voice softer than he can ever remember it being. “I’m sorry that I don’t know how to do this with you. I’m sorry about a lot of things, but we can talk about that another time; right now, I am trying to tell you that I have something. I need to talk to you about Kirsten’s brain scans.” Cameron is across the room and in front of Marian before she’s even got the file out of her bag, and moments later it’s open in his hands.

Twenty minutes later he’s digging his phone out from between the sofa cushions and calling Camille back.

“Okay, now I know _you_ don’t have temporal dysplasia, so you have to know it’s only been three hours,” Camille says as she answers the phone. There’s some background noise - mostly a low hum of chattering voices and some clinking that tells Cameron she’s probably in a coffee shop.

“How quickly can you and Linus get to my apartment?” he asks, not bothering with small talk.

“Well,” Camille says cheerfully, “that’s a funny story, actually! Given that I am currently enjoying a frankly _divine_ almond croissant at Audrey’s 24-hour cafe just round the corner from your apartment, I would guess -- two minutes?”

“Were you spying on me?” Cameron asks, then shakes his head. “No, you know what? Never mind. Of course you were. Just tell me Linus is with you.”

“You know it, boy wonder.”

“Then I’ll see you both in two minutes.”

“Make it three - I have many skills, but navigating powdered sugar while wearing an all-black outfit isn’t one of them.”

* * *

“Dr Goodkin. And Dr Goodkin!” Camille says, surprise written on her features as clear as day, Linus trailing into the apartment behind her. “If I’d known it was a family event, I’d have brought my cat.”

“You don’t have a cat,” Linus says, confusion wrinkling his brow. Camille pinches his cheek affectionately.

“And yet, I would still rather adopt the mangiest, most feral moggy in Los Angeles than have my brother standing within twelve feet of me,” she says sweetly, marching into the kitchen and jumping up onto one of the bar stools, dropping her bag on the floor as she goes. Cameron knows she does it just to see him twitch, but that doesn’t stop the twitching from happening. It’s a reflex.

“Camille Engelson,” she says, extending a hand to Cameron’s mother. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced.” Marian takes the proffered hand in a firm, professional handshake.

“No, there wasn’t a great deal of time for introductions, given the circumstances,” Marian agrees. She turns her gaze to Linus and smiles. “Linus, it’s good to see you. I was sorry to hear about your father, but I hope your mother is doing well? I’ve always greatly admired your parents’ work.” Linus’s smile is wan but genuine.

“She’s a rock as always, Dr Goodkin. She’s doing great - thank you for asking.” Camille takes his hand and squeezes, and then there’s no more time for pleasantries because the Doctors Goodkin have a lot of information for them.

Cameron pushes a copy of an MRI across the island and Linus flips it round, he and Camille leaning over it in tandem to study it.

“Okay, talk to me Ronnie,” Camille says, eyes narrowing at the scan; she plainly hates it when she comes across something she doesn’t understand right away.

“That’s a new one,” Cameron mutters, then points out two sections of the brain near the centre, each a mirror image of the other. “First off, this is Kirsten’s hippocampus. It’s in really great shape, even for a brain of this age, but what that tells us is that this isn’t something degenerative. In Alzheimer’s patients you see a shrinking of this area that isn’t present here.”

Linus frowns. “But we already knew this was event driven - or at least triggered by what happened in the Stitch - so why does that matter?” Cameron points at him.

“True. But when I say it’s in great shape… I mean it. It is in _insanely_ good shape. If I were to scan any of our brains, I’ll bet you my chef’s knife block that ours wouldn’t show even two-thirds of the growth that Kirsten’s brain has managed to achieve.” It’s Camille’s turn to frown.

“So she’s what - super smart? Has a bomb-ass memory? We knew _that_ too, since the annoyingly attractive gazelle has never let us forget it. Which it would be easy for us to do! Because I for one don’t remember you ever telling us you had a _chef’s knife block_.”

“Focus - if you spent half the time on learning brain mapping as you spend on thinking up nicknames, you’d be a neuroscientist by now.” Camille flaps a hand at him.

“Doth the pot call the kettle black, sweet prince? As if you don’t know I have a whole notebook of these stashed in a secure location. I think I get it though, actually,” she says suddenly, leaning in a little closer to the scan. “The stitches are giving her a boost, right?” Cameron nods and Marian leans over to point out a different area of Kirsten’s brain.

“Now look at this area of her brain, in the amygdala,” Marian says, finger hovering above a slightly darker spot in an area that otherwise looks perfectly ordinary and healthy. Linus makes a noise that’s a cross between surprise and excitement.

“Kirsten’s brain has fenced off an entire area of her amygdala,” he says, sounding weirdly impressed. “That’s actually incredible. I mean really, this is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Wow.”

“Yes Linus,” Camille says with a wry smile. “Why don’t we give Kirsten a pat on the amygdala for her contribution to neuroscience?” Linus rolls his eyes but looks suitably cowed.

“Linus is right though,” Marian says, standing up straight again and crossing her arms in a gesture reminiscent of her son. “This is completely new territory for us. Somehow, someone poked around in Kirsten’s brain and ring-fenced the last three years’ memories, essentially archiving them while she was on her way out of the stitch. The memories are theoretically intact, but I have no idea why it’s happened, or how we can get them back.”

“I might have an idea about _how_ this happened, at least.” The group look up sharply as Maggie Baptiste comes into view, Fisher close behind.

“Maggie! Fishy! Wow, your shipper name would never work either.”

“As usual, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Fisher says to Camille, but Cameron thinks he sounds fond. 

“You and everyone else in the room, Fisher,” Maggie says tartly, and Camille mimes zipping her lips.

“Why do I even have a door?” Cameron wonders aloud. “I should just live in an open field somewhere so that you guys can come and go unimpeded. Remember when we all had boundaries? I remember those times fondly.”

“I’m going to ignore that comment given recent traumatic events,” Maggie says benevolently, “and because right now, you need to see this.” She holds out a USB drive and Cameron darts forward to take it, moving quickly to his TV to plug it in. Everyone follows; nobody can help being lured in by the siren song of a mysterious flash drive - especially one handed to them by their usually-cryptic, often-sharp-edged boss.

Cameron fiddles with the remote and suddenly they’re watching one of the most painful moments of his life in high definition. There’s no sound, but he can see Kirsten popping her head round the door as the others leave Maggie’s office. They’ve all just been told that Kirsten cannot remember the last three years; she cannot remember the friendships made here, or the incredible work they’ve all done together; she cannot remember how many people she’s brought to justice, and how many lives she’s saved.

She cannot remember Cameron. Just the little boy who gave her empty words of comfort in a magnolia-walled room, while trying to keep himself together. Funny how history likes to repeat itself sometimes.

Focusing on the screen, Cameron can’t bring himself to look away from Kirsten. She’s ethereal even as she enters the room to break his heart a little more, calmly sitting opposite the high-definition version of himself, a look of undeniably generic concern on her beautiful features. He’s glad of the lack of audio, because he doesn’t think he can take hearing her ask him about his heart again. 

She’s touching his hand and telling him it’ll be okay one day, like she has no idea that only the day before, he was the happiest man on earth. He sees himself leave and feels again, now, the constricting of his chest as he did so, as he left a room that no longer held anything he could touch.

He’s so caught up in the sense-memory of that moment that he almost misses what Maggie wanted to show them all.

“Cameron,” Maggie says sharply, and he zeroes back in on the screen in time to see - what? Kirsten talking to herself?

“What’s she saying?” Cameron asks, brow furrowed. They rewind the clip, and there’s an almost imperceptible change in Kirsten’s expression, a minute movement of her head to look more fully at the camera, which it seems like she’s looking for. Her lips move again. 

There’s quiet for a moment, before Fisher speaks up.

“I will never forgive you for what you’re making me do to him.”

* * *

“She knew there was a camera there - feet off the goddamn coffee table Camille, how many times - so she was trying to… what? Send us a message?” Cameron has been pacing for the last ten minutes, sparing the occasional glance for the TV, which is paused on the image of Kirsten staring up at the camera. There’s something in her eyes that sends a frisson of fear down Cameron’s spine. It is and yet absolutely is not _their_ Kirsten.

(Camille doesn’t even pretend to take her feet off the table.)

“I think,” Maggie says slowly, “Kirsten may be trapped. In her own mind.” Everyone in the room turns to look at her, except Marian, who is nodding her agreement over at the kitchen island while she looks through the scans again.

“This fenced-off area where the last three years of Kristen’s memories may be being kept is incredibly… precise,” Marian says. “It’s not a specific memory that’s being cut off from her brain, but it quite clearly spans primarily the time she’s been with the stitchers programme, as well as the time she started being monitored by her father and other interested parties.” Fisher shrugs.

“Is that not normal though? I mean, I don’t have a lot of experience with memory loss, but I thought it was usually just, y’know,” Fisher makes a gesture with his hands. “Poof - memories gone.”

“Poof?” Camille says with a raised eyebrow. Fisher rolls his eyes.

“Can it, tough stuff.”

“Yes and no, Detective Fisher. There are several areas of the brain that deal with memory, and they all process and store it in different ways, and for different purposes. While any kind of trauma can trigger memory loss like this, I’ve never seen anything so precisely chosen yet imprecisely executed. Cameron?” He looks up at the sound of his name and nods, taking over from his mother.

“The area that’s been targeted - or so we’re assuming - is the amygdala, which deals with strong emotional memories. So fear, love, anger… memories associated with strong emotions are made memorable because the amygdala stores those for recall. It’s where we process fight or flight reactions.” Fisher nods to show he’s following and Cameron continues, a little faster now, working through the thoughts as they come to him. “The amygdala is the main source of memories high in emotion - i.e. the memories of the people we’ve been stitching Kirsten into for the last few years. Even when she herself wasn’t really experiencing strong emotions, she was getting more than her fair share from the dozens of bodies in the corpse cassette.”

Linus ‘hm’s from the sofa, steepling his fingers together, elbows on his knees.

“So whoever - or whatever - has shut off these memories, essentially went in with a kitchen knife when they really needed a scalpel?” Cameron nods.

“I think so. Whoever did this to Kirsten probably did want to get rid of a specific memory - maybe something she saw that would have been problematic for them - but they couldn’t do it just anytime. She had to be in a stitch, and we all had to be sufficiently distracted.”

“But nobody can get through our firewalls,” Maggie says sharply. “I am _reliably informed-_ ” and here, she somehow manages to direct a pointed look at Linus and Cameron simultaneously, despite the fact that they’re on opposite sides of the room from each other- “that they are impenetrable. How the hell did someone mess with Kirsten during the most important stitch we’ve ever performed at the lab without us noticing?”

They all lapse into silence for a few more minutes - surprisingly it’s Camille who speaks up first.

“No, no. We’ve got this all wrong. Nobody did this to her - she did this to herself.” Linus stares at her. Cameron frowns.

“You think she _wanted_ to forget us all? Camille, that’s insane.” (‘You think she wanted to forget _me_?’ he does not say, but from the looks he’s getting from everyone in the room, he may as well have yelled it.)

Camille shakes her head and gets up from the sofa so she can pace while she speaks; she holds her hands in front of her like she’s itching for a tablet, which is probably just muscle memory by this point.

“Okay, so - Kirsten just went through the most emotionally taxing stitch of her life,” Camille says, like they weren’t all there at the time (like this particular stitch hasn’t hollowed Cameron out and left him less, somehow). “She’s vulnerable as hell, she’s focused entirely on bringing her mom back - she’s not going to be paying a lot of attention to her own needs. She climbed into a freezer in her freaking underwear just to give her mom a chance of coming home.” 

“That explains _her_ being distracted, but not the whole damn lab,” Maggie bites out. Camille, unfazed by this after several years of being subjected to Maggie’s brand of management, continues.

“Yeah but by this point, our girl has stitched into more people than I can count-”

“Oh, the actual number of stitches we’ve completed with Kirsten is-” Camille closes her eyes with a pained expression and holds up her hand, which stops Linus in his over-enthusiastic tracks.

“I cannot express to you how much I do not care right now.” Linus seems only slightly offended, putting both of his hands up in defeat and leaning back against the sofa cushions. “The actual number is irrelevant. The point is, Kirsten’s life since she’s been with the programme?” Camille shrugs, looking caught between a smile and a grimace. “It’s been pretty emotional. She’s been feeling things she never even thought she was capable of feeling. Then she stitched into Cameron, and her own emotions got blown wide open.” Camille mimes what appears to be a bomb going off, and it’s like it’s going off in Cameron’s head. Out of the blue, Cameron _gets it_.

“Jesus. Camille, I think you might be right.”

“Don’t sound so surprised, hair boy.”

“Hair boy? That’s what you’ve got for me?”

“You’re a boy! There’s hair! I am nothing if not accurate.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, if we could all please focus?” Maggie interrupts coldly, looking back and forth between Cameron and Camille with her eyebrows raised in a silent question. Cameron feels a smile blooming on his face.

They can fix this.

“Maggie,” he says, turning away from where an equally hopeful smile is spreading across Camille’s face. “What do you do when something hurts so badly you can’t deal with the pain?”

“Personally?” Maggie asks drily, sharing a look with Fisher. “Liberally apply whiskey. But somehow I don’t think that’s the answer you’re looking for.”

“Some people pass out when they see blood. Some people slip into comas as a result of emotional trauma. There have been cases where people lose memories due to trauma that they cannot get back, because they have absolutely no idea how their own minds work.” Cameron wishes he didn’t sound so delighted about this, especially since Fisher is starting to look a bit concerned.

“Your point, Cameron?”

“Maggie… Kirsten just experienced a high unlike anything she’s ever felt before. Up until pretty recently, in the grand scheme of things, she didn’t even know what happiness really felt like. Then she stitched into her mom and felt not only her own joy at seeing her again, but also her mom’s - that must have been a lot. Her logical brain wanted to protect her, so it did the only thing it could - and cut her off from those years of emotion... and then some. Kirsten, more than any of us, understands how the mind works, in a very real and tangible way. She didn’t delete the memories, she just stored them in a back room somewhere. The Kirsten without her memories is still _our_ Kirsten, she just needs… rebooting.”

“That wasn’t a very scientific way of explaining the problem, Cam,” his own mother says from the kitchen, sounding a little disapproving, but not as much as he’s expecting. She has a glass of wine in her hand and, though he has no idea how she managed to find a glass that big in his house, he suspects it’s mellowed her.

“We’re not all neuroscientists, Dr Goodkin - sometimes the good ship Cameron needs to put it in computer terms for the differently abled,” Camille says, clocking the wine glass as she speaks and straightening up with interest. “Oh hey, is that Pinot Noir? Cam never lets me have the good stuff.”

Maggie sighs and stands up, which means all eyes are on her at once. Cameron sometimes wishes he had that kind of magnetic draw, but then he’s never been a trained CIA assassin; he’s not sure he’d want to take that route to quiet a crowd.

“Kirsten cannot know about what we’ve discussed here today. None of you are unhackable - not to her - so keep communication outside of this apartment to a minimum. We honestly don’t know how hard Kirsten’s subconscious is going to fight against any perceived threat; we must tread carefully. Camille, I need you to stay with her - can you do that?” Camille knocks off a sloppy salute.

“Aye aye, captain. Although I was meant to be moving in with a certain pocket sized medical examiner this weekend, so let’s try and get this sorted ASAP, guys.” She grins. “I’ve already rented the U-Haul.”

“You’re such a cliche,” Fisher says with a sigh, but they’re both smiling when she punches him in the arm. Cameron takes off his glasses to rub his eyes and catches sight of his watch. With a start, he realises it’s 3am.

“Okay, any further discussions can take place when I’ve slept more than a couple of hours together,” he says decisively. His mom looks like she’s about to argue but before she can say anything, Fisher intervenes.

“Cameron’s right. None of us are any good to Kirsten sleep-deprived and running on coffee fumes.” Camille snorts.

“Speak for yourself - although my preferred fuel is Sauvignon Blanc, if you ever wanted to fill my tank,” she says with a wink that could be seen from several blocks away. Or possibly space.

“How can you make even wine sound sleazy?” Fisher asks with a grimace, walking away until she hip-checks him into one of the pillars.

Linus hovers awkwardly in the living room as the others file out.

“Bro, do you mind if I crash on the couch tonight? I’m kinda wiped,” he asks in a low voice, face somehow hopeful and apologetic all at once. Cameron shoves his glasses back onto his face and narrows his eyes at Linus; his friend lasts five seconds before folding like a cheap suit. “Okay, Camille and I have orders to look out for you but honestly, I don’t think you should be alone right now! You’ve been through a lot, bro, and I totally get that you want your alone time, but seriously, this has been a _day_. I won’t make a sound, I’ll just be, y’know,” he continues, making some kind of all-encompassing motion with his hands, “around.”

Cameron rubs the bridge of his nose, glasses momentarily rising up to dig into his forehead.

“Okay, fine. But you are definitely Samwise in this scenario,” he says, turning his back on Linus to clean up the mess his mother’s made of the kitchen. Seriously, where the hell did she find such a big wine glass? He’s not even sure it could feasibly fit in any of his cupboards. 

“Oh come on, we agreed I’m Frodo!” Linus whines, and Cameron gladly falls into the routine of it all.

“I don’t remember agreeing to that.”

Linus starts a - probably very well-researched - argument as Cameron tidies up the kitchen, and he allows himself to believe, just for a moment, that the world around him isn’t shattered into quite as many pieces as it first appeared.

* * *

Cameron sleeps fitfully, and dreams of Kirsten’s face darkening over and over again, the pain in his chest flaring up every time she looks away.

_(“How’s your heart?”_

_“It hurts a little.”)_

He gives up on sleep around 7am, realising he’d been uncharacteristically optimistic about his chances of rest given the circumstances. He pulls on sweats and a clean-ish t-shirt, and makes his way to the kitchen. Linus is sacked out on the couch with his mouth open, a blanket haphazardly arranged across his torso; it’s a bit too small for him, so his feet are poking out the end. There’s a hole in his left sock. Cameron catalogues all of this as he moves over to get some water boiling, suspecting that coffee may well be the only way to get through today.

Five minutes later there’s a knock on the door, the oddness of which is balanced out by the fact that it wakes up Linus, who unceremoniously tumbles to the floor in a tangle of blankets.

“It’s amazing any of us are still alive,” Cameron comments, mostly to himself, abandoning both French press and tangled-up friend in favour of answering the front door. Unsurprisingly, it’s Camille he sees on the other side when it swings open. She is holding a very large paper bag and an equally voluminous mug; it appears to be empty, and the words ‘Camsten 5eva’ are emblazoned across the front in pink glittery bubble letters.

“Morning, lab rat,” she says, her cheer only marginally toned down given the time of day, and the fact that she’s standing in a communal corridor. “I sensed that you would be perfecting your sad sack routine by not being able to sleep, and as such I have brought sustenance at an unreasonable hour of the morning.” She holds up the bag and shakes it. Somehow it sounds like pastry, even though Cameron hadn’t been aware until now that pastry had a sound. He eyes her suspiciously.

“Firstly, you are _not_ a morning person,” he begins, stepping back regardless and allowing her into the apartment. “And secondly, this may well be the first time in our entire friendship that you haven’t insisted on someone else feeding you. I know I said I didn’t believe in aliens, but I may have been a little hasty.” Camille’s bright smile fades into something more genuine, a little sad around the edges.

“You’re not the only one losing sleep over Kirsten, wonder boy.” Cameron sighs and closes his eyes for a moment, then gestures towards the kitchen and closes the front door with a click.

“Mi casa es tu casa, apparently.” Camille waggles her massive cup at him in time with her eyebrows, turning on her heel and striding through to where Linus is still on the floor, either unable or unwilling to unravel himself from his blanket prison. Camille deposits the paper bag on the island and, noticing the steaming French press of coffee, whispers something that sounds suspiciously like ‘tu casa tiene _mucho caffeine_ ’.

“Is that Camille? What time is it? Also, can someone please help me?” Linus asks from the floor as they enter the living area.

“I got you, buddy,” Cameron says with a sigh, leaving Camille to her coffee thievery and moving to help Linus out of his predicament and back onto the relative safety of the sofa. “Not sure how you manage Zumba, with coordination like that.”

“It isn’t usually sofa-based - and my coordination has been praised by Janine as both ‘stunning’ and ‘memorable’,” Linus responds imperiously. He brightens considerably when he sees Camille pulling croissants out of her paper bag. “Ooh, are those from Audrey’s?”

“Linus, my sweet prince,” Camille says, holding one of the pastries up in the air like she’s just scored a winning touchdown. “From now until the end of time, if I have a croissant anywhere near me, please assume that it’s from Audrey’s. That girl knows her craft, and even if I weren’t into chicks, I would be into her for those pastry-making hands alone.”

“It’s seven in the morning,” Cameron says with a sigh, moving back to the kitchen to pour his own coffee, gently taking the touchdown croissant from Camille’s hand and ignoring her token protests. “Since we’re all here and awake, let’s set aside your weird thing for Audrey - who is at least 60, by the way - and try to make some headway before Fisher and Maggie inevitably end up at the door to glare us into submission.”

“Fisher doesn’t glare,” Linus argues through a full-body yawn, stretching up and off the sofa. “He just looks at you like you’re dumb, and he’s the only one in the room making sense. Which is totally unfair by the way, because he’s a literal jock.”

“People contain multitudes!” Camille bites back, throwing a croissant at Linus as he approaches the island; he fumbles it but manages not to lose it to the floor (which, as Cameron keeps it meticulously clean, would be worse for the floor than the croissant).

“Why can none of you people use plates?” he wonders aloud, staring forlornly at the crumbs all over the hardwood. 

“Childhood trauma,” Camille quips, pulling herself up onto a bar stool and picking apart her croissant with blatant disregard for all of Cameron’s clean surfaces.

“Think of it this way - you’ll have something to stress clean later,” Linus says helpfully, before gracelessly shoving a chunk of still-warm, buttery pastry into his mouth.

Cameron sighs and reminds himself that he loves these people, and also that you cannot maim or kill someone just for eating in a way that displeases you. Even if you’re really, _really_ tired, and your girlfriend has forgotten who you are, and you’re twelve seconds from a breakdown.

“Hey sad sack,” Camille says quietly, bringing Cameron out of his thoughts with an elbow to the ribs. She’s looking at him with that sad smile again, and Linus is now rifling through the cupboards in search of plates.

“Sorry, I just can’t-” Camille shushes him.

“I know, Cam - we’ll brainstorm the shit out of this problem, and we will _fix it_ because that’s what we _do_. Ain’t no freaky brain mojo that you and Linus can’t work around, am I right?”

Cameron allows himself to hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know that meme where the anime guy is pointing at a butterfly and asking if it's a pigeon? Yeah, I am that guy, except I'm pointing at this chapter and saying "is this science?"
> 
> 💁
> 
> (It is not science. Not even close.)
> 
> And yes, Camille has a Camsten mug. She ordered it online while she was drunk. She doesn't regret it. Do I have one? Not yet, no, but I have a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge that says I can make my own mistakes.
> 
> The chapter title is an obvious reference, but then again, I'm a pretty obvious person.


	2. Oliver & Company

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's get this stitch on the road.

Fisher and Maggie arrive at 8.30am exactly, and bring with them news that Kirsten is being kept at the lab with her mother for the time being, on the premise that they have a lot of tests to run on the both of them to make sure there were no negative consequences to the stitch. Cameron lets a hollow laugh escape.

“Negative consequences. Right.”

“Cameron,” Maggie says sharply. “I understand that you’re upset, but I need you to focus. You pilot the stitches, and more to the point, you piloted _this_ one. If there’s a key to undoing what has happened here - and doing it safely - you’re the most likely person to find it.”

“How do you manage to sound simultaneously comforting and terrifying? Because that is a skill I would _love_ to learn.” Camille is on her third mug of coffee by this point, so remains unfazed when she becomes the focus of Maggie’s steely gaze.

“Try running black ops in the CIA for several years, then getting saddled with a bunch of 20-somethings who keep running their mouths off at every opportunity.” Camille looks only slightly contrite.

“It’s a good thing you love us, huh,” she says, and Maggie doesn’t deign to provide a response, instead turning back to Cameron.

“You can have whatever resources you need. We’re working together on this, so get those synapses firing.” Cameron nods slowly.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll just-” Cameron points in the direction of his bathroom. “I need to get dressed. I wasn’t expecting 7am croissants to derail my morning quite this badly.”

“So ungrateful! Next time I’ll eat all of them myself then throw up in your entryway.”

He avoids another dig of Camille’s vicious elbows to his ribs and goes off to shower, sliding the bedroom door closed behind him. This does very little to muffle the yelling that follows Fisher stealing the last croissant directly out of Camille’s hand, but he tunes it out as background noise, mechanically turning on the water and placing his clothes in the hamper as it heats up.

By the time he steps into the shower, the bathroom is already steaming up, and he’s grateful that he doesn’t have to see himself in the mirror anymore; even with the renewed hope of yesterday’s revelations, he feels hollowed out and helpless. He barely recognises himself.

The hot water doesn’t soothe him like it usually does, but it feels good to wash off his sleepless night. He stands under the spray for a while, not really focusing on the actual task of getting himself clean; instead, he thinks about what Maggie had said in the kitchen.

She’d said _‘get those synapses firing’_ \- and yeah, intellectually he knows that’s just a turn of phrase, but there’s something at the edge of his mind telling him he’s missing something.

It’s not until he’s pulling on a clean pair of jeans that it hits him — and seconds later he’s skidding into the kitchen, slightly breathless, four pairs of eyes fixed on him in surprised silence.

Which is when he realises he hasn’t put a shirt on.

“Okay, I may have gotten a little ahead of myself, let me just go and-”

“No, please,” Camille says, holding a hand up to stop him and staring directly at his chest. “No need to cover up on our account - we’re all friends here! And also, may I just say? _Nice one, Kirsten_.” Cameron crosses his arms protectively across his torso - not that anything’s going to hide the flush that’s spreading from his face to his chest with alarming speed.

“Okay, we can have a little chat about sexual harassment later-” Camille at least has the decency to look him in the eyes for a moment, grimacing in a way that he chooses to interpret as apologetic - “but guys - the key to all of this is _nanites_.” There’s silence for a couple of seconds, and then-

“Nanites?” Fisher echoes, looking perplexed. “You mean those little robots you use on the lab corpses to help their memory functionality in the stitch?” Now everyone’s staring at Fisher, who flashes a grin at their disbelief. “Not just a pretty face. Don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”

Cameron raises his eyebrows, but doesn’t argue.

“But you don’t want to use the nanites on a corpse, do you?” Linus says slowly. Cameron shakes his head.

“Oh my god,” Camille says suddenly, catching on with an enthusiasm that, thankfully, seems to distract her from Cameron’s naked torso. “You want to use them on Kirsten to force a reboot of the funky part of her brain, don’t you?”

“If I might interject,” Maggie says, “I believe we previously did exactly that - but as an _offensive weapon_.” Cameron winces at her tone.

“Well _yeah_ ,” he admits. “But we’d reprogrammed them to fire off randomly because we were trying to disarm a threat. The nanites can be programmed using _way_ more specific parameters than we used then - we know exactly what part of the brain we’re looking to influence, and better yet, we know Kirsten’s mind like the back of our hands.”

Camille looks at the back of her own hand and gasps in mock surprise. “Well, that’s _new_.” Cameron fixes her with a look that he knows is even more pathetically un-threatening than usual, since a) he knew the joke was coming and b) he’s trying very hard not to get ahead of himself, but his brain is pumping out a hell of a lot of serotonin right now. He’s a man of science - or so he tells himself regularly, backed up by Linus - and all this is theoretical. They’re talking about an untested hypothesis based on a vaguely related instance, where the intent was to harm, not to heal. He’s not clutching at straws, but he’s at least straw-clutching-adjacent.

Linus, thankfully, seems prepared to clutch at straws with him.

“Actually, Cameron might have something here.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, buddy,” Cameron says, mouth twitching into a relieved smile; Linus huffs out a laugh and holds his hands up defensively.

“Hey, man, I’m on your side!” He turns to Maggie. “If we assume that Kirsten’s brain is otherwise healthy - which I think we can, given that we look at her brain roughly three times a week - the nanites would just give her the boost she’d need in repairing those synapses. She could essentially fix herself. Provided…” Linus flicks his eyes apologetically towards Cameron.

Cameron sighs, because here is the potential flaw in his plan. “Provided Kirsten wants to be brought back.” Maggie raises her eyebrows. Cameron closes his eyes, because he can feel Linus’s apologetic puppy stare on him and yeah, there might be more than just one potential flaw. “ _And_ … we would probably need a localised EMP in order to stop the nanites advancing once they’d given Kirsten enough of a boost to bring herself back. Which raises some other issues.”

“I can’t imagine why anyone would have a problem with you setting off an EMP in a lab made almost entirely of electrical equipment,” Camille says drily, one perfect eyebrow raised. There is a lot of eyebrow raising going on in this kitchen, Cameron thinks; also, he’s still shirtless, his brain is trying to consider all possible avenues at once, and he’s developing a thumping headache at the base of his skull. He’s meant to be having time off.

“How long would it take to get this set up?” Cameron’s gaze snaps back from Camille to Maggie, whose face is completely unreadable.

“What?”

“ _Doctor_ Goodkin-” (maybe one day Cameron won’t wince at that name coming from Maggie’s mouth, but that day is not today) “-I need to know how long it will take you to reprogramme the nanites, and create an EMP field of sufficient size and strength for us to go through with this entirely madcap plan. I also need to know what tools you will need, so they can be requisitioned. The NSA’s budget is not unlimited, but you find yourselves in the fortunate position of having a boss who believes that the capital outlay is worth the potential results.”

There is silence for a moment in the kitchen. Cameron hears a clock ticking and, distantly, the sound of someone playing some kind of meditation music; probably the guys down the hall who always smell like patchouli. As usual, Camille is the first to break the tentative quiet.

“Boss, you coulda just said ‘you have a go’.”

Camille, Cameron thinks as Maggie directs a withering look her way, is very lucky that nobody else seems to be able to work the tablet.

* * *

In the end, it takes them four days.

Cameron finds out through Camille, who is essentially watching over Kirsten and her mom now that they’ve been released from the lab, that Stinger is being held as they figure out how to deal with him. Given that his rap sheet goes from banal - squatting, breaking and entering - to psychotic - killing several people just to get a message to his daughter, whom he also nearly got killed - Cameron’s not surprised to hear that neither Kirsten nor Jacqueline are particularly cut up about this.

Even if Kirsten can’t remember her father doing all these things, he’s still the guy who left her when she was eight, after she thought she’d lost her mother forever. Jacqueline, on the other hand… Cameron suspects she can recall more than she’d like.

“How’s the EMP field coming along, Maestro?” Cameron’s thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of Linus and Camille at his workstation, both of them looking as exhaustedly determined as he feels. He sighs and leans back in his chair, running a hand through his hair.

“I’m worried if I make it any smaller, I won’t be able to modulate the strength of the pulse - and since we’ll only get one shot before we need to recharge it again, I can’t afford that kind of uncertainty.”

“Have you run simulations?” Camille asks - he and Linus just look at her pointedly. “Of course you did, what a stupid question! I forgot I was talking to King Uber-Nerd.”

“That’s a new favourite,” Linus says appreciatively, and Camille curtsies with a smirk.

“Appreciation can be shown through gifts of tequila shots and even more tequila shots when this shitshow is finally over.”

“I will buy you all the tequila you can drink if this ends even half as well as I want it to,” Cameron says distractedly, his eyes slipping back to his computer screens. Want, need - the words are interchangeable at this point.

“That, good doctor, is a sentence you will one day come to regret. And so will I! Basically my brain thinks there’s no such thing as too much tequila, whereas the rest of my body is _painfully_ aware that there is such a thing as too much tequila.”

“Is it aware that there’s such a thing as too much talking?” Maggie interrupts, appearing out of nowhere, as she does. Camille blinks a couple of times.

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Something to look into, perhaps,” Maggie says pointedly. Camille slumps back to her workstation - which is actually Tim’s workstation, except he’s off getting _married_ (who knew) - and Linus is dispatched back to his computer with another laser-eyed stare.

“How are we looking, Cameron,” Maggie asks quietly, her face softening as she looks back to him. He cocks his head to the side, considering.

“Well, the nanites are fine… we’re as close as we’re going to get with them, and yes I know-” he preempts her, holding up a hand in supplication- “that’s not very scientific, but this is uncharted territory. The simulations I’ve run show promising results, but I keep running up against problems with the EMP.”

“What kind of problems?”

“First off, I can’t seem to make the field any smaller than the size of the main lab without getting huge variations in the stability and strength of the EMP.”

“Which means?” Cameron sighs. Leans forward on his elbows. Thinks about a way to phrase this that won’t get this entire project scrapped.

“Honestly? This really will be a one-shot wonder. We need to pull her out of the stitch within a very small window - the nanites should keep her stable enough that we can bounce Kirsten without her input if needed - and then immediately use the EMP to stop the nanites from spreading any further. The only problem is, with the field being the size it is, it would also short out most of our equipment as well.” Maggie closes her eyes, looking a little pained. It’s an expression the team is used to by now.

“So we’d have to reboot all our systems before we could even recharge the pulse.” Cameron nods. Maggie stands up straight, glancing over to where the elevator has just deposited Kirsten and her mother, the former looking curiously around the room like she’s itching to get another look at everything. Cameron watches her too, his chest tightening in a way that’s all too familiar.

“Well then,” Maggie says eventually, turning back to him and tapping one manicured finger against the glass tabletop. “I would advise you to get it right first time.” Then she leaves to greet Kirsten and Jacqueline, leaving Cameron wondering if he will ever be able to get an accurate read on her.

* * *

In the end, it’s easy to find a body for them to use. Fisher is still with the LAPD after all, and murders don’t stop happening in Los Angeles just because you’ve caught the guy methodically working his way through the NSA’s chain of command with a gun. People kill for a lot less than what Stinger had at stake.

“Jonathan Oliver,” Camille says, swiping an image of the murder victim from her tablet onto the main screen. In the picture, Jonathan looks happily windswept, sitting on a deckchair somewhere with what looks like a margarita in his hand. There’s a dog just out of view, its tail only visible as a haze of in-motion wagging; a moment in time crystallised on the camera of a guy who now lies, immobile, in the corpse cassette. “Thirty-two years old, recently married to his _much_ older wife, Melissa - 50 - who owns a local newspaper and has a PR team so cut-throat-competent she could probably get away with murdering most of downtown LA without getting pulled up for it”

“Okay, so he’s a young-ish, attractive guy,” Kirsten says, resting her chin on steepled fingers (and Cameron really can’t rationalise the stab of jealousy he feels low in his gut, because the man is _dead_ for god’s sake). “I guess he could have married her for money? Maybe he was having an affair and she found out.”

“It’s a thought,” Camille says carefully, swiping across so that a photo of Melissa Oliver appears on the screen. “She’s a wealthy and influential woman, but she is also-”

“ _Hot_ ,” Linus interrupts, staring at the perfectly-posed picture of Melissa with cartoonish open-mouthed shock. The photo was very obviously taken at the same beach, Jonathan Oliver standing next to her with the dog sitting patiently between them. Melissa is holding a martini glass, the contents of which are escaping to the sand below without her noticing; she and Jonathan are looking at each with such joy and adoration, even Camille looks a little taken aback.

“I wasn’t going to put it like that, but I guess I wouldn’t kick her out of bed, so point made,” Camille says, swiping again to another picture; this time the two of them are clearly at their wedding reception.

“The dog is wearing a bowtie,” Linus says (coos, really), covering his mouth with both hands.

“That is…” Kirsten says slowly.

“Unfortunately adorable,” Camille finishes for her, sighing. “I know, I was so ready to assume this woman killed her boytoy, but I haven’t seen this much love in a room since--” She stops and clears her throat.

“Since?” Kirsten prompts, looking at her with interest. Cameron is looking determinedly at the screen, perhaps in the hopes that he can swap places with the dead man, just for the next few minutes.

“Brangelina!” Camille finishes lamely. “Obvs pre-divorce, but you know - whatever! Mr and Mrs Smith-era Brangelina is more what I was thinking. Before things got real cray in Tinseltown.”

“Camille,” Maggie prompts, a dangerous edge to her voice.

“Yeah, so, moving _swiftly_ on - Jonathan was found dead in their swanky house in the hills last night by their maid. Blunt force trauma to the head. Mrs Oliver seems to be pretty cut up about this, and claims she was at the office all night. It tracks, since she often kicked it on a couch she had there according to their security guy, and everyone in the building vouches for her... but the LAPD are having to subpoena the camera footage out of her.”

“If she’s got proof that she’s innocent, why isn’t she just giving them the footage?” Kirsten asks, brow furrowed.

“People in _that_ business work in secrets - but whether or not it’s the murder of her husband remains to be seen,” Maggie says, cryptic as ever.

“Well if she’s looking for husband number 2 after this, I am _definitely_ available.” Camille throws a paper cup at Linus in response to this comment, which hits him straight in the forehead. “Oh come on!”

“Actually, you’d be husband number 4, dumbass,” she responds with an eye roll. Linus doesn’t bother trying to throw anything back at her, which is wise given Cameron has seen him try and fail to throw things way more aerodynamic than a paper cup before. It doesn’t usually end well.

“If you’re all ready to start acting like adults,” Maggie says icily, putting a stop to any further pitching, “I think we’re ready to get going with the stitch. Cameron, you have five minutes to brief Kirsten on what we’re about to do.” Kirsten turns to him with a smile, which he weakly returns, and everyone quickly leaves the room to prepare.

“Alright K, time to get you up to speed,” Cameron says with more bravado than he feels, pulling several items out of the bag at his feet. He arranges them on the table in front of him, Kirsten looking on with interest.

It would be a lot easier to explain everything if she wasn’t wearing the same dark red jacket he’d dragged down her arms less than a month ago. He’s caught in a helpless loop, picturing that moment over and over again; he can perfectly recall the hum of electricity when butter-soft leather made way for skin-on-skin, pressing her against cool wood and then into cotton-warm sheets. His mind replays the frantic energy with which she pushed back against him, her grip tight, desperate, on his neck and tangling in his hair. He had been able to push away these thoughts when she hadn’t been in front of him, but it’s almost impossible when she’s a scant two metres away.

Kirsten, who has a picture perfect memory, does not remember this. To her, he is a kind boy in a hospital room, and a stranger with big hair. He clears his throat.

“Is that a syringe?” she asks before he can say anything, zeroing in on what is indeed a syringe in the assortment of items between them.

“Yeah - it’s filled with nanites,” he says, holding it up so she can see the apparently empty needle. “They’re-”

“Microscopic robots,” she finishes. A breath of laughter escapes him and she smiles, her eyes crinkling up at the corners in a way he has always found hopelessly endearing. “Dr Goodkin said my long-term memory is intact, as well as some of the things that would be considered accumulated general knowledge. I guess for me, that includes nanites.”

“I can think of worse things,” he says quietly, smiling back at her. Then he looks down at what’s in front of him again, because she hasn’t stopped smiling, and her eyes are kind, and it’s not her fault but she doesn’t know what that does to him. “I’m told you remember your first stitch, when you were eight?” She nods. This, at least, makes his job a little easier. “Okay, well Stinger used similar technology to help you stitch into a living consciousness - it didn’t work the way he’d planned, but we’ve come a long way since then, scientifically. Since we don’t know if the last stitch changed anything fundamental in how you interact with the technology, we’re going to inject some pre-programmed nanites that should make this easier for you.” Kirsten cocks her head to the side.

“Tiny robots in my brain, huh? Sounds like science-fiction, to me. Or magic.” Cameron looks at her curiously.

“Someone once said to me that science is just magic that’s been explained,” he says slowly, watching Kirsten for a reaction. She stares back at him for a moment. Then she leans back in her chair and crosses her arms.

“I suppose that was me.” Cameron nods and she considers him for a few seconds, before shaking her head and smiling.

“That’s too weird. Okay, so - is it just the nanites?” Cameron lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“Not quite. You have a suit to wear for your time in the tank - Christie will help you into it if you need a hand. It’s pretty tight.” Christie, right on schedule, knocks on the door to the meeting room and smiles at Kirsten.

“Ready?” she asks, and Kirsten nods, smiling back.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” she replies, standing and shucking her leather jacket. She goes for the buttons of her shirt and Cameron stands up so fast he almost hits his knees on the table.

“Whoa there, princess, how about we get you to a room that isn’t made predominantly of glass for that?” Kirsten looks out at the lab with a grimace.

“Alright, good point.” She moves her hand away but leaves her jacket where it is as she moves to the door. “Lead the way, Christie.”

And with that, the first part of Cameron’s mission is complete. Unfortunately, it just gets exponentially harder from hereon in.

* * *

“How did you get on with little Miss Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?” Camille asks in a stage whisper once he gets back to his workstation.

“I just really wish she was wearing something else,” he says through gritted teeth, running a few diagnostic tests on the computer just for something to do with his hands. He can feel Camille looking at him, and then she lets out a blessedly quiet gasp.

“Oh my _god_ , is that what she was wearing when you guys-”

“Just the jacket,” Cameron interrupts, “but that’s definitely enough. If this doesn’t work I might have to destroy it somehow.”

“Cameron. Babe. I love and support you, but I am going to use this against you until the day I die. Or you do. I feel like you’ll go first, if I don’t get alcohol poisoning.”

“Thanks Camille - you should become a therapist,” he mutters, shoving the comm into his ear with slightly more force than needed.

A few minutes later, Kirsten comes out in the suit, hair tied up in her customary ponytail - and this part will probably never stop affecting him, Cameron thinks. Even now, with three years of her memory gone and surrounded by people who are complete strangers to her, she walks in with the confidence of someone who has never once worried what people think of her. That was what had first attracted him to her, and he thinks it’s unlikely to stop being unbearably sexy.

 _Especially_ in the suit.

They meet at the tank, although Cameron’s not sure he remembers moving; he just gravitates towards her and suddenly they’re in each other’s space. Probably a little close actually. He holds up the syringe and she smiles at him again. She’s doing that a lot today.

“You ready to stitch in, K?”

“If you think I’m ready, I guess I’m ready,” she says with a little shrug. It’s the work of a moment to get her situated in the tank, Ayo telling her to keep her feet in contact with the pads, just like the first time. This Kirsten doesn’t argue, and Cameron wonders how much of this is in some way muscle memory. He hands the syringe off to Ayo and jumps onto the ladder to say - what? Goodbye? Good luck.

“You’re gonna do great,” he says instead, and this he can do; this isn’t a lie. “You’re a natural, trust me.” Kirsten smiles.

“If you say so.”

“When you need to bounce - that is to say, when we tell you to get the hell outta dodge - you’ll input your username using your left keypad, then your password using the right. Your username is ‘kirsten’, all lower case, and your password is-”

“Oh, Cameron,” Linus interjects from across the room. “I might actually have changed that. Yeah, I totally changed it. Sorry, I forgot to mention it earlier.” Cameron closes his eyes and counts to five. Then he opens them, and asks a question to which he fears he already knows the answer.

“Okay, Linus - what’s the new password?”

“It’s ‘I heart cameron’, all lowercase, no spaces.” Linus at least has the good grace to look mildly ashamed of himself.

“Of course it is,” Cameron mutters, looking back at Kirsten in the tank. She’s looking back at him, but her face is completely unreadable. He swallows, and tries to project an air of having his shit together. “You get that, K?”

“Loud and clear,” she says. Cameron nods and gets off the ladder so he can avoid that unfathomable gaze; there are no heartbreaking blondes at his workstation. There is, however, a Camille.

“Now, this will surprise you,” she says conversationally, tapping away at her tablet, “but I actually advised against that particular stunt. Which is totally unlike me, I know.”

“That will be taken under advisement when I consider replacing you all for some peace and quiet,” he intones under his breath. He’s mostly - but not completely - joking. Probably. He turns on the comm and takes a breath. “Ayo, I need you to inject the nanites now. You ready, catwoman? This might sting a little.”

“I had my shots as a kid, I think I can take it,” she says drily, and it’s just such a Kirsten thing to say that he laughs.

“Noted. Ayo - go right ahead.” Ayo is quick and precise, as always, and a second later he hears a sharp intake of breath over the comm.

“They’re in,” Ayo confirms, disposing of the syringe and dropping her gloves into a medical waste bin by her station.

“Okay, everyone - let’s show Kirsten how good we all are at our jobs. Lights at 20% please.” The lights dim on command, which is really less of a necessity and more of an ambience thing; nobody’s called him out on it yet though. “Mission clock to five minutes please. I need a go, no go for stitch neurosync. Life-sci?”

“Go.”

“Sub-bio?”

“Go.”

“Engineering?”

“Go.” (Tim’s replacement is his twin brother, Tom. It is very possible that there have been two of them this whole time and Cameron never noticed.)

“Communications?”

“Go.”

“Medical?”

“Go.”

“Comm check - one two, one two. You ready, Stretch?”

“Sorry, I’m not very good at movie references,” Kirsten says apologetically. “But I’m good to go Cameron. Or do you prefer Dr Goodkin?” Even Camille looks a little bit pained by this interaction. Cameron opts for pretending it doesn’t feel like a knife between his ribs. He’s getting quite a lot of practice in at the moment. Eventually he’s going to run out of ribs.

“Don’t worry about it, princess. Inducing stitch neurosync on my mark - three, two, one—” And then he brings his focus down to what matters right now; keeping Kirsten safe. Bringing her home.

He breathes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, more pseudoscience. I have an English degree, what do you want from me?
> 
> That jacket is a vile and wicked temptress, and Cameron is completely within his rights to be distracted by it.
> 
> This title comes to you from my fond memories of an all-animal animated production of Oliver. The best kind? I think so.


	3. What's The Password?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> About to earn our mature rating, so strap yourselves in.

Kirsten gasps in a breath and looks around wildly, trying to get her bearings. A voice in her ear - Cameron’s voice - tells her _ “easy, Stretch - you’re safe, you’re just projecting your consciousness right now. I know it’s unnerving, but I need you to get your breathing under control. Can you do that for me?” _

She nods, then realises he probably can’t see her. “Yeah, I - this is insane. Yes. I can do that.” She focuses on her breaths until she feels her own heartbeat calming.

_ “That’s great Kirsten, your heart rate’s looking much better. Now what can you see? Where are you?”  _ She looks around, still consciously steadying her breathing, and realises she’s in the most upscale house she’s ever seen. There’s a dreamlike quality to the scene around her - which sort of makes sense from what they’ve told her - but it’s more like low-quality television than anything. It feels pretty real.

“I’m in some kind of fancy house,” she says, turning around when she hears raised voices. “Jonathan’s here, and he’s arguing with someone.” Kirsten squints and then suddenly she’s right next to Jonathan, who is much more alive than the last time she saw him, and looks absolutely livid.

**‘I can’t believe you’re taking her side over this!’**

**‘I can’t believe you’re trying to MAKE me take sides. I love you, Marilyn, but Melissa and I are happy and you are not going to take that away from me!’**

_ “Talk to me, Stretch,” _ says the voice in her ear - it’s grounding, and she takes another breath, orienting herself.

“There’s a woman. Dark hair - not Melissa. Marilyn? She’s accusing him of taking his wife’s side, and he said he loves her but he’s happy with Melissa.”

_ “A lover’s quarrel?” _

“I don’t know, I’m sensing… something different. I don’t think it’s that kind of love?” There’s a pain in her head suddenly and she sucks in a breath.

_ “You alright, K?” _

“Yeah, fine - just a pain in my head. It’s gone now though.” She goes to rub her forehead before she remembers she’s not actually there.

_ “Okay well… let me know if it happens again.”  _ Kirsten can’t place his tone of voice. Worried? There’s silence for a moment, then she hears  _ “memory hotspot coming up - moving you there now. Stand by.” _

And then she’s somewhere else - the beach.

“The beach. The beach from the photographs.” She looks around her, and there’s Jonathan again, this time clinging desperately to Melissa underneath a palm tree. “His wife is here with him - I’m going closer.” And she finds, again, that she suddenly  _ is _ closer.

**‘Can’t we just stay here forever?’** Jonathan is saying, and Melissa throws her head back and laughs with her entire body. It’s a rich sound; happy and full. Kirsten smiles, finding she can’t help it.

**‘John, as nice as that would be, I’d drive you up the wall! The cornerstone of this marriage is going to be me spending every other night at the office to make sure you miss me.’**

_ “Kirsten?” _

“Yeah, I’m here.” She swallows, breathes again. The pain in her head is back, but stronger this time. “I think this is their honeymoon. They seem really happy - he loves her.”

“Okay, so maybe he wasn’t having an affair,” Cameron says in her ear.

“No, and-” The pain is getting worse. “Cameron, my head… Is it meant to hurt like this?”

_ “Not usually, princess,” _ he says after a pause.  _ “But the death moment may be trying to pull you along - our victim died of a head wound.” _ The pain intensifies and Kirsten lets out an involuntary hiss.

“Okay, can we - can we just go there?”

_ “Moving you to the death moment now - hold on, Stretch, you’re almost home.” _ Kirsten doesn’t have time to think about how weird he sounds - and really, who is she to say what weird sounds like from a friend she’s clearly forgotten everything about - before she’s blinking and-

— A gasp of breath. She’s back in the house, and everything is awash with red.

**‘I’m not having this conversation with you again, Marilyn! I married her because I loved her, it has nothing to do with you and I’m not going to rip her off. You need to leave.’** Jonathan is furious, fists clenched at his side.

**‘You cannot do this to us - to our family!’** It’s Marilyn, and she looks—

“So angry…”

_ “Who’s angry? What can you see?” _

“Marilyn again. Back at the house. She’s screaming at Jonathan that he can’t… can’t do this to their family. I don’t know what he’s done.” She winces at the pounding in her skull.

_ “It looks like Marilyn is Jonathan’s sister - we’re coming up on death, you’ve gotta bounce soon, Kirsten, okay?” _

“It hurts,” she says, and she could be writhing for all she knows, because she’s not even really  _ in _ her body right now, but god it hurts so much and she wouldn’t be able to stop if she was. Through the haze she sees Jonathan turn around, and Marilyn picks up something, she can’t see what—

_ “Kirsten, you’ve gotta bounce, can you hear me - bounce now, cupcake, or I’m gonna have to do it for you—” _

Kirsten’s whole body feels sluggish and her brain is on fire, but Cameron is asking her to do this, Cameron needs her to bounce, she just has to—

* * *

_ I heart Cameron. _

* * *

Cameron’s been this scared before, he thinks as he pulls Kirsten out of Jonathan’s mind and presses the button to generate the EMP.

He was scared to die. Of course he was. He can remember the cold creeping in, his vision going grey and watery; the world narrowed down to nothing but Kirsten’s face, her hands clutching at him like she could keep him there somehow.

He’s had heart surgery, been shot at and beaten up, had things ripped away from him that he’s come to rely on like breathing — he’s woken up in hospital more times than he’d like, heart pounding in a way that reminds him he’s pathetically and undeniably human. He’s dreamt about dying over and over again, waking up in a cold sweat, counting his fingers just to convince himself he’s really awake, alive, breathing.

But he has never - not once - been this terrified in his life. He’s no sooner released the EMP than he’s ripping off his comm and running through the darkness to the fish tank, scrambling up the steps and groping blindly for Kirsten’s face, her arms, anything to tether her — and to tether him.

“Kirsten -  _ Kirsten _ , speak to me,” he murmurs, fumbling in the water to find her pulse and failing miserably, because it’s too  _ fucking  _ dark, and he might have  _ killed  _ her — he’s so stupid, so fucking stupid—

“Cameron…”

He would probably be willing to admit, under duress, that the noise these three syllables rip from his throat could be described as a sob. He feels wet hands on his face, and yes, he’s probably crying, but does that matter? Kirsten is alive, and there’s movement all around him, and flashlights and—

“Nanites, huh.” He can see her now, in the wavering light of torches, and she’s smiling at him; it’s something small and private and so reminiscent of the  _ her _ that was  _ his _ — but he doesn’t know if it worked, if it was worth it, until— “I guess my boyfriend’s a bit of a genius.”

The laugh this pulls out of him is exultant (and a little wet), and Kirsten is just smiling at him, smiling and smiling—

The lights flicker on and he hears Linus say something that’s probably a Star Trek quote, but he doesn’t  _ care _ , because Kirsten’s hands are still on his face, and she’s still  _ smiling— _

And then he’s being dragged away from her for probably very sensible reasons, like Ayo needing to check her vitals, but he has never in his life less wanted to be sensible. 

“Cameron?” He can hear Kirsten saying his name, sees her sitting up and fighting against the hands on her, and even though he knows they need to check her over he’s desperately angry.

“Come on guys, at least take her out the goddamn tank—”

“His sister killed him, now let me  _ out  _ of here. Yes, okay, I know what’s happened to me thank you, I was  _ there _ ,” Kirsten snaps at one of the team, and she’s pushing past them and climbing out of the tank, even as Maggie tries in vain to call everyone to order—

Seconds later Kirsten’s practically throwing herself into his arms and they’re kissing like it’s been months since they last did this, not days. She’s soaked, dripping all over floor and quickly saturating the front of his shirt, but all he can focus on is the heat of her mouth on his, her hands tangling in his hair; his own hands grip her hips so hard he might be worried, if he had the capacity for higher brain functions, that he’s bruising her. Distantly, Cameron is aware that this is unprofessional, and that this is shortly going to become a real and  _ visible  _ problem.

Unfortunately, that awareness doesn’t seem to be overriding his need to have Kirsten an atom’s breadth away from him.

What eventually forces them apart is a loud, shrill whistle; it’s staggeringly painful, and, when Cameron thinks it’s safe to remove his hands from his ears, he has to resist the urge to flip the bird at Fisher. He knows it was him because he looks entirely too pleased with himself.

“Hey love birds,” Camille says loudly as she walks over to them, the amusement in her voice suggesting this is not the first time she’s tried to hail them. “Little hint from your pal Camille!” She leans in close and, in a stage whisper, says “the quicker Kirsten’s cleared for take off, the quicker you two can get back to doing  _ this- _ ” (here she gestures between them and does an appropriately lewd eyebrow dance)- “in a place where you won’t do what even several years in the CIA couldn’t, and give Maggie a coronary.”

Cameron knows she’s right, but it’s a little hard to hear common sense over the pounding of blood in his ears.

“Okay,” Kirsten says quietly, sounding breathless but resolved. Cameron is already itching to have his hands back on her, and the occasional hitch in her breathing as she stands apart from him isn’t making it any easier to ignore that impulse. “Just keep Cameron out of my sight the entire time and we’ve got a deal.” Cameron takes a deep, calming breath through his nose, and resigns himself to several more tortuous hours at the lab, replaying that sentence in his mind. 

“Solid choice, blondie,” Camille says, her cocky grin melting into something more genuine as she lays a hand on Kirsten’s shoulder. “Good to have you back. Cameron was the saddest of all the sad sacks, which meant I had to keep getting breakfast for everyone. It  _ totally  _ sucked.”

“It’s official - I ship it,” Linus says seriously from the other side of the lab. Camille looks delighted.

“You’re picking up the lingo! This guy gets it.”

And then Cameron is watching helplessly as Kirsten is whisked off for a plethora of extremely necessary tests; tests he would, if it had been literally anybody else, have insisted on before they’d even opened their eyes in that tank.

“Congratulations, Cameron,” Maggie says to him a few minutes later, as he’s going over the data from the stitch just for something to do with his hands. He looks up at where she’s standing by his workstation, her face uncharacteristically soft. “Looks like your hypothesis stands up to fairly rigorous testing. What you and the team have accomplished in just a few short days is nothing short of incredible… And I don’t use the word lightly.”

“I’m in no hurry to try it again,” he says honestly, and Maggie’s resulting smile is small but genuine.

“Let’s hope it never becomes necessary.”

He’s left to his own devices for several hours, managing to lose himself in data analysis; there’s plenty to look over, and even with everyone on the team helping out, it’s going to be a hard slog to get it all appropriately catalogued. When he’s finally pulled away from his work by a gentle hand on his shoulder, he’s surprised to see that it’s Fisher.

“They’re just wrapping up with Kirsten - I’d suggest you do the same here if you don’t want to keep the lady waiting,” he says with a wink, squeezing Cameron’s shoulder before going to move away.

“Hey, can you teach Camille that?” Cameron asks suddenly. Fisher stops, raising his eyebrows in question.

“Teach Camille what?”

“How to wink in a way that projects comfort and solidarity, rather than sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.” Fisher laughs.

“It may have been easy enough teaching her self-defence, but I think that one’s beyond me, Goodkin.”

* * *

Cameron grabs his jacket and waits by the elevator as patiently as he’s able. Linus gives him a fist bump as he leaves, and not long after that Camille breezes past him saying something about pizza and vino, so she’s clearly got a good night planned at her new place.

It seems like hours until Kirsten emerges from the back of the lab, dry and fully clothed, though he doubts it’s been more than ten minutes. Her eyes find his immediately and she smiles, bright and warm; he’s pretty sure his face is doing the same thing back at her, but he doesn’t actually have any control over it.

“Is it hot in here?” Cameron asks when she joins him at the elevator. “It feels kinda warm.”

“Yeah, I could probably do with some help out of this jacket,” she says lightly, taking his hand to pull him with her into the elevator. The heat creeps up a couple of degrees, and the doors are barely closed before she’s  _ on  _ him, pushing him against the cool wooden panelling in a way that’s startlingly familiar. “I  _ missed _ you,” she says fiercely.

“God Kirsten, I-” But she’s kissing him before he can complete the thought, let alone the sentence, and honestly, was it an important thought? Probably not. Cameron can’t imagine anything more important than this.

Kirsten’s hands are sliding underneath his shirt, fingertips skimming his ribs, fingernails digging sharply into his back. Her jacket is on the floor - Cameron supposes he must have done that at some point - and really, alarm bells should be going off in his head given where they are and what they’re clearly working towards during a one minute elevator ride, but he’s  _ committed. _ The floodgates are well and truly open, and he has neither the power nor the inclination to stop this. He thinks if he were to let go of Kirsten now he might just disintegrate; he’s pretty sure her mouth and hands are the only things keeping him together.

“Wait, hold on,” she says breathlessly, pulling away for a few disorienting seconds and looking around. “Where’s the - there, right.” And she pushes the elevator stop button. Before it’s even juddered to halt her mouth is back on his and she’s pulling at his belt with steady, insistent hands.

“Okay Stretch, that gives us five minutes until security checks up on us,” Cameron murmurs against Kirsten’s neck, between biting kisses that have her clawing at his shoulders and desperately pulling at his shirt. He pulls away enough to give her room, half wondering if five minutes is enough time even as he fumbles urgently with the button on Kirsten’s jeans.

“I left my underwear in your locker, now can we  _ please  _ just-” Okay yeah, it’s definitely enough time, Cameron thinks dizzily; moments later he has her pressed against the wall of the elevator, every scrap of their clothing scattered across the floor, alongside the remaining shreds of Cameron’s shattered self-control.

“Slow later,” he promises Kirsten, somehow managing to speak through the haze of need that’s threatening to suffocate him. “I’ll make dinner. There might even be candles.”

“Candles later.  _ This _ now,” she agrees with a strangled laugh, and then she’s wrapping an encouraging leg around Cameron’s waist and he loses the ability to form coherent thoughts.

(It turns out they need three minutes and twenty-six seconds. They may only have done this once, but Cameron is a scientist; he’s analysed the data and he has never been more passionate about a subject in his life.)

The wrecked noise of completion Kirsten makes against his mouth is what sends Cameron over the edge, pressing blunt fingernails into her hips and burying his face in her neck to muffle what is no doubt not a noise at all, but a broken confession.

_ (I thought I’d screwed everything up. I thought I’d lost you. I thought it was my fault, and I’d broken you, and you wouldn’t want me again if you knew how.) _

Kirsten is breathing hard in his ear and Cameron kind of wants to stay like this forever except--

“This was a little messier than I’d planned for,” Kirsten admits in a whisper, pulling back to look him in the eyes. The situation is so funny all of a sudden, thrown into sharp relief by the crackling of a speaker, from which a disembodied voice asks if they require assistance.

“No! No, thank you,” Cameron hurriedly reassures the technician while Kirsten shakes with silent laughter against him. “No assistance required, we’ve nearly sorted the er - the issue.”

And they cut him off, both laughing semi-hysterically and clutching at each other hopelessly as they try to get their breathing under control. “Okay, okay, oh my god this is ridiculous,” Kirsten says finally, straight-faced. “Let’s just get dressed before we get busted. I do  _ not  _ want to have to explain this to Maggie.” They look at each other and then they’re gone again.

“Jesus, her  _ face _ ,” Cameron wheezes, peeling himself away from Kirsten and steadying her before they both start picking up their belongings in between bouts of laughter. “Fortunately, my apartment is only twenty minutes from here,” Cameron says as they struggle back into their clothes, Kirsten only grimacing a little as she zips up her jeans. “All the mod cons, as I’m sure you remember. Bed, shower-”

“Candles?” Kirsten asks with a smile, pressing the button that brings the elevator juddering back to life. Cameron smiles back.

“Candles,” he agrees.

* * *

They shower separately, and he lets her go first because Cameron is a gentleman; also because he sometimes feels profoundly  _ un _ gentlemanlike, and he doesn’t think he can resist Kirsten in his space, wet and covered in soap suds.

“You’re cute when you’re worried about my virtue.”

“I think we left virtue in the elevator, princess,” he responds, cocking an eyebrow. She just smiles again - she’s doing that a lot today, and he wonders if it will ever not pull at something hot and needy inside of him - and starts stripping in his bedroom. “Okay, first off? That’s not fair. And secondly - there’s a hamper in the bathroom, come on.”

She throws her jeans at his face and a moment later he hears her quiet laughter as she closes the bathroom door.

* * *

She comes and gets him a little while later for his turn in the shower while still wrapped in a towel, so he’s distracted for a good five minutes kissing her soundly on the kitchen island.

“I would’ve thought,” Kirsten’s saying between kisses, ‘hm’ing approvingly when he moves down to her neck, “you’d be weirder about doing this in your precious kitchen.” Cameron pulls away to look at her incredulously.

“Kirsten,” he says slowly. “If you think there is a single thing I would deny you at this point, you really haven’t been paying attention.” Kirsten’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly; Cameron thinks, if he were close enough, that he might be able to hear the uptick in her heart. She’s never been cold, not really, but he thinks she’s just now learning what he’d do for her; what he  _ has _ done for her.

Her smile, when it comes, is blinding.

“I think I’m starting to get it.”

* * *

It’s not until later - much later - that they talk about Before. After they’ve both changed into clean, time-softened sleepwear; after they’ve eaten leftover Thai food out of takeout containers millimetres apart on the couch; after they’ve brushed their teeth and Kirsten has settled into Cameron’s side under his ridiculously high thread count sheets.

After all of this, they talk about what happened.

“We saw you talking to yourself on the security feed,” Cameron says, and he can feel the dull thud of his own pulse in his throat as he speaks; can remember the hot burst of hope in his chest, as much as he’d tried to force it down.

“I remember that,” Kirsten says quietly. Cameron’s unsurprised, but intrigued nonetheless.

“Yeah?” She nods against his chest.

“Yeah. I can remember it all, it’s just that the part of me that knew you and the others… It was locked up pretty tight. I really didn’t know who you were.” She sounds apologetic, which is ridiculous because it’s not her fault, it’s  _ his _ \- and he tells her as much. She scoffs. “Yeah, okay - because  _ you _ were the one who tried to purge yourself of three years’ worth of memories because you were afraid to keep on feeling.” She sighs and pulls herself into a seated position, twisting a little to face him. “I messed up big time, Cam.” He shakes his head and gently reaches out to take her face in his hands.

“Everyone makes mistakes, Stretch. Everyone tries to protect themselves, especially when something hurts. But you know what? Not everyone has their mind plugged into dead people several times a week in a secret underground NSA facility.” Kirsten lets out a choked-up laugh, wrapping her hands around his wrists, anchoring herself.

“I know, but-”

“No buts, KC.” Kirsten bites her lip, and her whole face looks so open and raw that Cameron starts to realise that maybe he didn’t get the worst deal of the two of them. He lost her, but he still had everyone else. He still knew himself. “This wasn’t your fault. And okay, maybe it wasn’t my fault either - although I’m still on the fence about that. But the important thing is that you’re back, your mom’s here, and your dad is probably going to be locked up in a very small, windowless room for the rest of his life while scientists try to figure out how a man like that managed to produce someone as extraordinary as you.”

Kirsten’s laugh this time is bright and surprised, like it’s been shocked out of her, and she leans forward and kisses him like there’s nothing in the world she’d rather be doing.

Eventually they’ll have to talk about how they move forward like this; about how they navigate work, and their relationship, and everything in between. But for now, they have this, and it’s more than Cameron had ever allowed himself to hope for.

* * *

Later still, they have their candles. 

Cameron presses Kirsten into the mattress, kisses every inch of her skin and revels in the sharp intake of breath when he moves his mouth to her hips, her thighs, the soft skin between them. When he first met Kirsten, he got into the habit of counting their moments together in minutes and seconds, ready at any moment to give her the information her temporal dysplasia stopped her from collecting.

He never really got out of the habit.

It takes Cameron nine minutes and thirty-three seconds to make his way down from her neck to the apex of her thighs.

It takes him fifteen minutes and twelve seconds of slow, methodical dedication to her clit before she shakes apart under him.

It takes thirteen minutes and three seconds of whispered encouragement, Kirsten’s hands on his back, in his hair, on his face, before he follows suit.

It takes two minutes and fifty-six seconds for his heart rate to return to normal.

Thirty-two seconds of warm, comforting quiet.

“Cameron?”

“Yeah, Stretch.”

“I love you too. I should have said that, before.” Cameron smiles, big and slow and inexorable, pulling her against him a little tighter in the darkness.

“Maybe - but then I wouldn’t have got to hear you make a Star Wars reference, and that would’ve been a damn shame.”

Between one breath and the next, Kirsten is asleep next to him.

Forty-five seconds later, Cameron follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I sure had fun! Did any of this make sense? Probably not, but I came here to have a good time and boy howdie did I have one. Writing this did really make me want a croissant though, so there's that.
> 
> (Linus finds out they had sex in the lift, and now won't touch anything in there, even though it gets regularly cleaned. Camille finds out and high-fives Cameron, then Kirsten, then herself. Then she smacks Linus on the ass. I don't know why she's like this but I'm here for it.)


End file.
